WBI Founders

Our 17 Year Record

From June 1997 until the present, the Namies have led the first and only U.S. organization dedicated to the eradication of workplace bullying that combines help for individuals via our websites & over 10,000 consultations, telephone coaching, conducting & popularizing scientific research, authoring books, producing education DVDs, leading training for professionals-unions-employers, coordinating national legislative advocacy, and providing consulting solutions for organizations. We proudly helped create the U.S. Academy of Workplace Bullying, Mobbing & Abuse.

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Employer Workplace Bullying Policies – WBI Survey – 2012-B

Using our Instant Poll capability here at the WBI website, we asked 311 respondents (98% of whom are self-declared targets of bullying):

Does (did) your employer have a specific policy prohibiting workplace bullying? [It can be part of another policy, but there must be protections for everyone, regardless of sex, age, religion, etc.]

In 2010, we asked the national sample of respondents, representing all adult Americans, if their employers had an explicit anti-bullying policy. But based on the response, we were certain that they confused an anti-discrimination policy (written to comply with state and federal laws) with the need for additional protections for workers against abuse in same-gender and same-race situations. So, we asked the question much more specifically for this single-item survey.

We also acknowledge that new policies are springing up called “Respect,” “Respectful Workplace,” and “Civility.” The names indirectly address workplace bullying. However, they may be useful if specific protections against abusive conduct are included, regardless of the title that diminishes the problem.

Policies without enforcement and accountability for all abusers are insufficient. When special people (e.g., high-ranking bullies) are allowed to bully with impunity from punishment, the policy is not worth the paper it’s printed on. So, we offered survey respondents the chance to make a statement about the existence of a policy by any name and to further qualify the breadth of its enforcement.

Of the original 311 respondents, 38 chose the option: “Not sure if policy exists”

We eliminated them, leaving a sample of 273 individuals who were sure about the presence or absence of policies relating to workplace bullying and the quality of enforcement.

Again, the question was:

Does (did) your employer have a specific policy prohibiting workplace bullying? [It can be part of another policy, but there must be protections for everyone, regardless of sex, age, religion, etc.]

The response choices were:

No. There are only anti-harassment or anti-violence policies chosen by 61.9%

Yes. [An anti-bullying] Policy exists, but not applied to everyone (some are immune from enforcement) chosen by 17.9% — this counts as an employer failure to credibly stop abusive conduct.

According to the customers of internal employer anti-bullying protections, approximately only 5% of employers have adequately addressed workplace bullying. Within the good employer group, less than 3% have the courage to call bullying what it is and to craft explicit policies with credible enforcement procedures.

About one-third of employers (32.5%) created something but either the policy or its enforcement is considered by targets to be too weak to prevent or correct workplace bullying.

The majority of employers (61.9%) simply ignore bullying. In a recent survey of HR professionals conducted by the HR trade association SHRM, 44% said they had no plans to create an anti-bullying policy in the future. Until there are laws, myopic employers may believe that bullying costs them nothing. This is a myth. Bullying is very expensive.

WBI Instant Polls rely on self-selected samples. The survey is not “scientific” in that its results can be extrapolated only to describe the perceptions of individuals bullied at work, not the general population.

[…] especially if their current workplaces are toxic. The issue really becomes about retention.” According to a 2012 survey from the Workplace Bullying Institute, 68 percent of workplaces do not have a policy regarding […]